A natural selection: intelligent design
THE MODERN neo-Darwinian theory of evolution has taken it on the chin recently. Public opinion surveys suggest that only about one in 10 Americans believe that life developed through purely natural processes, without divine assistance, as evolution posits. Over the last year, state and local school boards across the country have decided to open their biology classes to supernatural explanations for life. A few weeks ago, President Bush added his voice to the chorus, saying schools should teach intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution.
Americans simply don't find Darwinism very appealing. According to modern Darwinists, random genetic variations chosen in a survival-of-the-fittest process created all living things, even humans -- with nothing guaranteeing our emergence at the top of the heap. Darwinism is not a comforting world view for conscious, egotistical beings like us.
Humans are mammals with a sense of purpose. That is our nature. Many theories of modern science have challenged our sense of purpose. Astronomy has moved us from the center of a finite universe to the periphery of a minor galaxy in a vast and expanding universe, which may itself be only one of many universes and merely a blip in time that came from and will return to nothingness. Geology and paleontology have pushed back our origins beyond any meaningful comprehension. Darwinism leaves life itself to chance. No wonder people rebel against such ideas.
Intelligent design, despite its proponents' claims to the contrary, isn't modern science. It's part of that rebellion against it. Scientists look for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Their best explanations, if they survive rigorous testing, become scientific theories.
Intelligent design, in contrast, is a critique of all that. Its proponents may challenge the sufficiency of evolutionary explanations for the origin of species but they have not -- and cannot -- offer testable alternative explanations. The best they can offer is the premise that, if no natural explanation suffices, then God must have done it. Maybe God did do it, but if so, it's beyond science.
This is where lots of people would like to be: beyond science. According to doctrinaire Darwinism, we arose from the muck by chance, we struggled to exist, we will return to dust and probably everything that can remember us or be influenced by our efforts ultimately will end. Intelligent design, on the other hand, posits that we came from a designer who transcends nature's limits and offers us hope that we will live beyond those limits.
